Top Mile High Murder mug shots of 2009: A photo gallery

Since we started our Mile High Murder series in May, we’ve written about 56 homicides in the immediate area around Denver. Unfortunately, many of these slayings remain unsolved at this writing — but arrests have been made in a sizable percentage of them, resulting in the release of photos capturing…

Medical marijuana among the booty in home invasion

Reports about medical marijuana-related crime are on the rise. Note our interview with Lt. Jerry Schiager, commander of the Northern Colorado Drug Task Force, who cited “at least five armed robberies, seven burglaries and one kidnapping” related to marijuana in the Fort Collins area over the past year and a…

Sexting taken to a super-creepy extreme by Geovany Alarcon

Sexting: the latest teenage pastime designed to make adults lose their shit. But before you write off the response to the phenomenon as more middlebrow hysteria, grok the particulars of Geovany Alarcon, twenty, who earned a four-year prison jolt in Weld County Court today for giving sexting an even worse…

Grim details emerge in prison death of sex offender

Last week, we reported on the bludgeoning death of inmate Ronald Ferguson, a convicted child molester, at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility outside of Canon City. A fifty-year-old habitual offender serving time for kidnapping and sexual assault on a child, Ferguson was struck repeatedly in the head with a metal…

See the masked gunmen who stuck up Bank of the West

Banks have had plenty of troubles during our ongoing economic crisis — but they’ve still got more money than the rest of us, which explains in part why there’s been such a rash of robberies of late. Just yesterday, we told you about the $83 Bandit, who’s allegedly removed booty…

Allen Ford, last of alleged racial attackers, gets busted

Late last month, the Denver Police Department began rounding up more than thirty African-Americans accused of robbing and/or beating men and women because they were either Caucasian or Hispanic. Now, the last of the at-large suspects — Allen Ford, 18 — has been taken into custody; he was busted late…

Did four juvies set a record for most cars stolen in a day?

Old-timers who bitch that young people today don’t have enough ambition obviously never met four juveniles taken into custody early yesterday. According to Lakewood Police Department spokesman Steve Davis, this quartet managed to swipe five cars before being busted — and afterward, one of them asked if they’d “set a…

MSNBC’s prison-reality show and the death of a pedophile

Lockup, MSNBC’s voyeuristic peek at life inside America’s nastiest prisons, launched its new season Saturday (*corrected) night with some cell floodings and tough talk by thick-necked inmates at Colorado’s own Limon Correctional Facility. This season (titled “Extended Stay: Colorado”) will focus on Limon, a simmering high-security hoosegow that houses close…

Amateur Poker Tour head Matt Sowash sentenced to five years

Matt Sowash, the former head of the Amateur Poker Tour, has been sentenced to five years in prison and five years of probation for illegal actions related to his attempts to solicit investors in a new poker tour that would have held tournaments in bars. Sowash and business partner Andrew…